


Empty Houses Need to Be Filled

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Moving In Together, Moving On, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Arabella moves back from Italy and Emma moves in with her and the two of them both try to move on from the past.





	Empty Houses Need to Be Filled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Culumacilinte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/gifts).



Emma didn’t stay in Italy long.

She knew that Jonathan sent her there because it was safe, and from the news drifting back from England, it was not very safe there at all. But Italy didn’t feel like a real country; Padua didn’t feel like a real city. Maybe she was a hopeless bore, but she’d always preferred England. And she missed it.

That was what was bothering her, she told herself. Homesickness. Besides, magic was having a new Renaissance in England from the sound of it. Jonathan would have hated to miss that, and he wouldn’t want her to miss it either.

So she said her goodbyes to Flora and Mr. Greysteel and took the first ship with relatively cheap tickets. The journey was not so long, really. It almost made her laugh at how far away Jonathan had seemed during the war. He had been so close, really, all that time. She was learning what real separation meant now, and it was funny, wasn’t it, how stupid she had been before, how sad about things that were only little problems, little problems…

She did not return to their country home. After all, her return to England was to embrace the rebirth of magic. She went instead to their townhouse. She had heard Childermass was starting something up in the city, organizing magicians to talk about craft and figure out how to work magic in the absence of the two practicing magicians of England and all the magic books of the land. Seemed promising.

The townhouse felt empty. But this was not a unique property. The house in Padua had felt oddly empty too, even with Flora and Mr. Greysteel. Arabella was prepared to live with it, but as it turned out she didn’t have to, because two weeks after her arrival in the city, an old friend showed up at her door. A friend in somewhat desperate straits.

“I don’t want to be a bother,” Emma Pole said. “I do have my own allowance. I could rent a flat, I suppose—or at least a room—but I heard you were in town, and…”

“Of course you are welcome to stay,” Arabella said. “You can’t have imagined I would refuse you.”

“A lady has a right to refuse whatever she wishes,” Emma said gravely. “To tell the truth, I almost didn’t come at all.”

“Really?”

“I know I don’t want any reminders of that place,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t want to serve as such a reminder for you.”

Arabella smiled. “Well, don’t worry about that. I…I don’t think about that place. Truthfully, I barely remember it. And, if it worries you, I see no need for us to talk about it at all.”

“Oh, I don’t mind talking about it. It’s other things—dancing, certain styles of dresses, houses that decorate with too much gold. Little things, really. But they get under my skin.”

Emma shivered. Arabella put an arm over her shoulder. “Shall I fetch you a shawl?”

“No, thank you. I’m not _sick_.”

“I didn’t suppose you were. But this house can be a little drafty.”

Emma eyed Arabella. “I’m fine. In any case, thank you for your offer. May I move my things in tomorrow?”

It was a very hasty arrangement, but it suited Arabella fine. Emma did not have many things to bring, either. She brought them all in two large suitcases and a number of smaller boxes, and most of it, she said, was junk pressed on her by her husband. She would have been just as happy with nothing but her clothes, her sewing supplies, and a few other necessities.

“He’s trying to be kind, I suppose.”

“Walter is kind when it’s convenient,” Emma said shortly. “But I won’t throw the things out, don’t worry. We can just put them in your attic.”

The attic was empty except for a few magical odds and ends, so there was plenty of room. The boxes looked a little sad, clean and tidy on a dusty floor. But they were soon put out of mind.

* * *

Emma wasn’t kidding when she said she didn’t mind talking about her experiences in faerie. In fact, saying she “didn’t mind” had been a large understatement. It was more like it was now her favorite subject. Fortunately, she had found an avid audience in the York Society of Magicians, led by Mr. Childermass and Mr. Vinculus. She went to the society’s meetings every month, and it seemed like every other day she was off to visit one member or another, most often Childermass or Vinculus, to consult on some magical endeavor.

Arabella received many invitations like these, to meet with prospective magicians and consult, using her experience as a magician’s wife. She generally declined unless the letters mentioned actual magical skill. She did go to meetings of the York Society, though—one night a month was no trouble, really.

The first meeting she went to, with Emma in tow, was certainly an experience. Everyone argued, often talking over each other. The only person they really hushed up for was Emma.

“ _No fairies_ ,” Emma said severely.

The gentleman she was addressing leaned away from her, and coughed. “I am not suggesting we engage in any sort of fiendish pact like we now know Mr. Norrell did, Lady Pole. I am only saying that we know these gentlemen exist, and we know they have the knowledge we lack. Surely summoning one or two would not be amiss, just to see if they might reveal anything of value.”

“Fairies are dangerous,” Emma said, “fairies are tricky, and fairies do not give anything of value—or anything at all, for that matter—without receiving anything in exchange. You think you are cleverer than Mr. Norrell? So you’ll be fine? Well, you might have a conscience but a fairy could still bargain you out of your own kidney if you gave him ten minutes to do it. So listen to me a little more carefully when I say, _no fairies_.”

She glared.

Arabella coughed. “Well, I’m sure we’ve all learned our lesson about dealing with fairies, Emma. Thank you.”

“This one clearly hasn’t.” Emma was not only unrepentant, she was indignant. “He’ll go bartering away some other poor woman’s soul and then say it was just a terrible mistake, a misunderstanding! Your stupid quest for knowledge is not worth…”

“Emma.”

“Mrs. Strange,” Emma mimicked. “Yes, I am aware I am improper, but I am right. Do you have anything to add?”

Arabella sighed. “I would mention that if you engage in the profession of magic, whether you directly consult with fairies or not, it is quite possible you may draw their notice. Be careful. Be on the lookout for magical tricks. My husband was, in fact, cleverer than Mr. Norrell—in my opinion at least—and he still fell pretty to one of their kind. You are not smarter than my husband.” She bit her lip. “I would suggest you be very careful.”

She faded back into a corner, then, and listened to the discussion continue, on how to best avoid interactions with fairies or how to deal with one if it showed up despite one’s best intentions. Her hands were shaking. Bother it all.

She pulled Emma aside. “I might make an early evening of it.”

“Oh?” Emma gave her a careful look. “Yes, maybe you had better. The atmosphere here is intoxicating; it can be exhausting. I will stay a little longer.”

“Perhaps I should stay, then. Otherwise you will have to hire your own carriage and drive home alone.”

Emma smiled. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Strange. I can take care of myself. I am quite capable.” On seeing Arabella was unappeased, she touched Arabella’s cheek and gingerly kissed her on the lips, a reassuring peck. Friendly—but unnerving, at the same time; it reminded Arabella of how Jonathan used to kiss her when he shooed her off so he could continue working in the study, into the late night hours. “Go home, now. Get some rest.”

Emma insisted, so she did.

* * *

She woke, one night, to the feeling of a hand on her elbow, unexpectedly warm. She turned, and it was Emma.

“Please stop,” Emma said.

There were dark circles under her eyes.

Arabella said, “Stop what?”

“Stop dancing.”

“I’m not…”

She paused.

What was she doing?

She was in the middle of the parlor floor in her nightgown but with her hair up and dressed as if she were going out. Her feet were bare, and they were sore. She couldn’t remember putting her hair up or coming down here or anything, really, since going to bed. Dancing.

Had she been?

“I’m not dancing,” she said more firmly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You most certainly were. Waltzing all around the room.” Emma shivered. “Please stop. You’ve been doing this every night. I know the magic’s effects are lingering and I’m sure you can’t help it, but… please stop.”

“Every night?”

“Every night for the past two weeks since I moved in.”

Arabella crossed her arms. “And why didn’t you bring it up sooner?”

“People used to tell me all the mad things I did, and ask me to stop. It made me angry because I couldn’t help it,” Emma said. “And I know that you can’t help it and I should be reasonable, but please. _Stop_.”

Arabella sighed.

“I don’t know how to stop something I didn’t know I was doing.”

“I know. I _know_.”

“How…how about I come to bed with you?”

Emma tilted her head. “How’s that?”

“If I were in bed with someone, I might sleep deeper. Or you could stop me from getting up, if I tried, or wake me.” Arabella wet her lips. “If you don’t mind the company.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind.” Emma nodded, slowly. “Thank you.”

It was Arabella who ought to be thanking her for the favor, but she accepted the thanks. She was too embarrassed to do otherwise.

And so they went to bed together. Arabella thought it might be like sleeping with Jonathan, and worried that it would make her sad, make her miss him more. But Emma wasn’t shaped like Jonathan. Jonathan was all angles, and he shifted restlessly at night. Emma was all softness, and she lay still, almost abnormally still. She did not object when Arabella wrapped her arms around her.

“Thank you for indulging me,” she said.

Arabella almost laughed at that; as if she’d _wanted_ to be sleep-dancing all night. “Don’t worry, dear,” she said instead, and with an amused smile she kissed the back of Emma’s head. Her hair smelled clean. It was thicker than Jonathan’s.

It was still a while before Arabella could sleep.

* * *

Although Arabella did not seek magic out as actively as Emma, she did not have to. Magic came to her. Sometimes in the form of all those letters—fans of Jonathan’s, people who knew she’d been involved in the writing of his book and thought she might have it actually memorized, people who just wanted to know what it was lie to be a prisoner in faerie—and sometimes a bit more aggressively.

Most unnervingly, there were the ravens.

They had begun to follow her around since her return from Italy, though only casually. Always at a respectful distance. There were always at least a couple sitting outside the house, and she could tell that a couple nests had been built in a nearby tree. When she walked with a friend in the park, they would gather on all the trees around her. And when she walked with Emma, it was worse. They flew closer and closer and closer and closer.

Once a raven landed in Emma’s hair. She barely reacted. She reached up and stroked the feathers on its back, then said, “You are going to get my hair messy.” It let out a reluctant caw and flew off.

“You’re very calm,” Arabella observed.

“The Raven King is a friend, not an enemy,” Emma said. “And, if his magic, the magic of England, is where I believe it to be, it is in the hands of an even better friend.”

“Don’t talk in riddles.”

“I mean I think they’re sent by Stephen,” Emma said. “I can’t reject anything from him.”

Arabella pursed her lips. To her the ravens seemed wild, acting of their own volition, nothing but chaotic, curious magic sending them her way. But to contradict Emma would be too harsh. Emma had lost Stephen, after all, much the same way Arabella had lost Jonathan.

Instead she kissed Emma on the cheek and said, “Let me fix your hair.”

Emma let her.

* * *

Not surprising Emma liked the ravens. Emma liked everything about magic now, after all. She was obsessed with it. It drew her out of the house day after day after day after day. Off to visit a York Society magician. Off to visit Childermass. Off to visit John Segundus, even though she admitted to Arabella she used to hate him. Off to visit some old woman who claimed she had seen visions. Off to visit a pair of worried parents convinced their son or daughter had a _gift_.

It sometimes irked Arabella how often she went out. She would leave Arabella to spend the day alone—have tea alone, eat dinner alone, sometimes even wait for hours knitting alone in the evening—and never seem to think twice about it. She’d laugh at how solicitous Arabella was when she returned, and list off her accomplishments of the day with the same braggadocio Jonathan used to vaunt. And Arabella would smile and have to listen attentively because Emma was so proud of her achievements and her independence and she’d been through _so much_ and if Arabella admitted she was bored and would have preferred it if Emma had just spent the day with her instead, she would be an objectively terrible person.

There was one good thing about Emma’s absences, though. While Emma was around, Arabella focused on her too easily; she almost hovered. It left her with little time for something which had been a real goal of hers since returning from Italy: seeing what magic could be used to achieve the return of her husband.

On an afternoon when Emma was out visiting one of those forgettable, deluded old women, Arabella was trying the trick she had always seen Jonathan do the easiest: Scrying. It couldn’t be that hard. She had a bowl of water, she had some dead flowers, she had a knife, she had all the things Jonathan had always used. What was the generic spell he had used to see just any person he wanted to see? Not for an enemy or a particular friend, just a person. She closed her eyes and focused. Ah, that was it…

She stirred the water with the stem of a dead rose three times and had placed it on the right side of the bowl at a slight angle when Emma came barging in.

“Arabella!” she said. Her face was flushed and excited. Her footsteps were much harder than usual and has jostled the table. Arabella readjusted the rose. That should be fine, right?

“Yes, Emma?” she asked, making sure her voice was quiet. Emma could probably take a hint.

“Remember how you told me to stop bothering with all the old ladies? Well, I have proved you wrong once and for all.”

Arabella put her hands on her hips. “Have you?”

“Mrs. Chokeworth is a genuine magician,” Emma announced. “In fact, with a bit of practice, she’ll be better than any of those phonies at the York Society.”

“Emma, the York Society magicians are not phonies. You yourself—”

“Don’t worry, I’m not insulting them. But Mrs. Chokeworth is a genuine talent.”

“How about you tell me over dinner, dear?”

“In the span of ten minutes she levitated a glass more gracefully than I ever saw Mr. Norrell do, or your husband for that matter.”

The slight to Jonathan’s talents was the last straw. “Emma,” Arabella said edgily, “I am doing something.”

Emma finally looked at the assortment of items on the table. She raised her eyebrows and scoffed. “Are you trying scrying, then? Well, that can wait. This is important—”

“What’s important is finding my husband,” Arabella said. “Your story can wait.”

“Oh, is that what you were trying to do?”

“It is what I have _been_ trying to do.”

“Well, yes.” Emma calmed a little, but she couldn’t hold down a smile. “But you work on it every day, don’t you? And this really is something.”

Arabella crossed her arms. “I’m aware that for you magic is all very fun and you think that it’s a game. And it’s fun for you to run around befriending every half-baked talent you can find, just for the thrill of it. But some people want to use magic for an actual purpose, and sometimes that purpose is a little more serious than levitating a glass.”

Emma raised her eyebrows. “You think _I_ think magic is a game? Me?”

“Oh, please don’t play the ‘ _I-was-a-captive-of-the-faerie, poor-me_ ’ card with me, Emma. We both experienced that and one of us is managing to still be a mature, responsible human being.”

“Responsible? What—How is it irresponsible to want to get involved in developing the talent of the next generation?”

Arabella rubbed her temples. “Fine. Maybe I’m being harsh. Please, we can talk about your genius over dinner. But I have important business here.”

“Fine then, I can help with that. The discussion can wait.”

“I don’t need help. Scrying can be done as easily alone.”

“Yes, but you don’t know everything about magic, Arabella, I can help you.”

“And you do know everything?”

“Two heads are better than one.”

“I said,” Arabella said, “I don’t need you.”

There was a brief silence. Emma crossed her arms. “All right then. I have letters to write. I’ll see you at dinner.”

And over dinner they were perfectly civil. But Arabella slept in her own bed that night, and Emma did not come to her room to see why she had broken their habit. The bed felt empty, but that was all right.

Everywhere was empty, after all.

* * *

She didn’t sleep with Emma the next night, either, or the night after.

They didn’t stop speaking to each other. They were polite over meals, and asked each other how their days were. But Emma was out three days in a row. On the fourth day, she stayed in, and asked if Arabella would like to do some sewing and discuss magic.

“I had planned to go on a walk this afternoon,” Arabella said.

“May I come with you?”

“I had planned on going for a walk alone.”

She smiled. Emma smiled. She left.

She walked to the park. Largely she ignored the people who greeted her on the street. She had become too well-known; her face wasn’t exactly notable, but people still recognized her who she didn’t know at all.

Ravens followed her. They circled in the sky above her, and when she settled down on a bench in the park, they perched all along the back of it, nearly pecking at her shoulders with their closeness. She could feel their too-fast heartbeats in her own chest, and she took deep breaths, trying to calm herself by examining the shiny black of their feathers.

“It is reasonable to want a walk alone,” she said.

A couple ravens cawed at her.

She stood abruptly. “You lot shouldn’t have followed me either.”

She went back home, a couple ravens flew in with her when she shut the door, and she cursed. Unladylike, but she didn’t think she had an audience, until she turned and saw Emma stifling a giggle.

“We’ll have to get them out now.”

“Let them stay,” Emma said. “They’re friends.”

“I have a household to run.”

Emma raised her chin. “You and your _household_. You’re not that much older than me, you know. And you’re not so great just because you own a house—and if you want to kick me out you can go right ahead.”

“I don’t want to kick you out,” Arabella said, “just these ravens.”

“You don’t much like me here either.”

“It’s not that. I just…” Arabella shrugged. “We were getting along fine until the other day. There’s no need to make a fuss about it. But Jonathan is lost, and no one’s really helping me to find him, and you…”

“I what?”

_You complicate things. You distract me. You can be insolent. You’re as unhelpful as anyone else. You’re the only thing keeping me going. I expect the world of you. I don’t know what to do with you._

Arabella blew out a breath. “You are the only person in my life right now,” she said.

Emma’s eyes glittered. In a sudden spasm of energy, she swept close to Arabella, grabbed her face with both hands, and kissed her. It was not the way she usually kissed Arabella, either. It was harder, firmer, heavier. It was not a friendly, affectionate gesture. It was nothing casual. It was a voiceless scream.

Also, it involved tongue.

Arabella scrabbled to find a grip on Emma, to steady herself. She braced herself by grabbing Emma’s back. Emma was so tall when she stood straight up—she had more bulk to her than Jonathan, Arabella thought, and at that thought she realized what it was, exactly, that she was doing.

She drew a ragged breath in. She almost pulled away, but then she didn’t.

Fuck it.

Emma said, afterward, “You’ll start sleeping with me again?”

Arabella blinked. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“Good. Then you can stop dancing.”

“What?”

“You’d started dancing again. The sound of it was driving me crazy.”

“Oh, is that what that craziness was?”

Emma grinned. “Well, maybe not—but if you come to bed with me, we can satisfy that madness too.”

* * *

Arabella did get up in the middle of the night that night. But she did not dance. She was wide awake. She walked downstairs and saw that the ravens, which she had forgotten, were making a nest on the mantelpiece out of yarn and paper and sticks from the fireplace.

She had no energy to try to chase them away.

There was a mirror over the mantle. It was new; all the old mirrors were broken. Maybe this one was no longer a doorway. She looked through it, and though she had never been able to scry, she tried to imagine Jonathan on the other end.

“You told me not to be a widow,” she said. “Is this all right?”

There would never be an answer. But when she went back upstairs, the house felt less empty than before.

**Author's Note:**

> The York Society of Magicians and the Strange townhouse are not in the same city so let's pretend the Stranges just had more than one townhouse lols. But anyways, culumacilinte, I really loved your prompt for Emmabella messy recovery fic so I hope you liked my take on it.


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